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Monday, August 28, 2006

Knitting on the Road

We are back from our weekend trip to Ann Arbor, which was fun, but exhausting. The latter especially so for J, who was feeling kind of sick-ish and achy before we left and wasn't helped by all the hours in the car. (Don't worry, as soon as we got back I made him take some Advil, get out the heating pad, and relax while I cooked him a yummy dinner. I heard no complaints about any of my orders.)

Perhaps I should backtrack and explain the reason behind the trip. The original purpose was to accompany my baby brother (probably a misnomer since he's 19, but as he's a good eight inches taller I can't really call him my little brother anymore) up to Ann Arbor, where he's starting college next week. Brother had the idea for the family reunion part of the trip. You see, my aunt and uncle and cousins all live in the Chicago area, which really isn't all that far away, but they all lead incredibly busy lives and as a result we never see them except for when someone gets married or dies. (The one exception in recent years was the trip for the surprise birthday party in February.) Brother decided that was simply unacceptable, so he has been pushing us to arrange a family reunion. As it turned out, everyone was free this particular weekend, and Ann Arbor, being equidistant from both Chicago and Pittsburgh, was an incredibly convenient location.

I took both my Seraphim shawl and my Steelers sock with me on the trip, and worked on Seraphim in the car in in the hotel room while J was napping. The sock came out while sitting around the hotel waiting for family members or in the car going to and from dinner or sightseeing excursions, and my cousin Lara was especially enchanted by it. Don't believe me?

She just had to try it on and see if it would work well as a sock puppet. Here she is mugging it up with my cousin Adam. (And yes, we were wearing matching t-shirts. J designed them, and they had all the family last names on the back. They were done in maize and blue for the occasion, for obvious reasons. Let it be known that we were not the only family reunion at our hotel this weekend, and the other family was much larger and louder -- and they had matching t-shirts as well! Clearly we were not the only dorky family in town.)

Here's a shot of me and my sweetie in front of Zingerman's, an absolutely incredible deli/bakery/eatery in greater Ann Arbor. The general manager of the place saw our t-shirts and insisted that we take a big group shot in front of the store -- he even took the photo for us!

(Would you believe that I carried my camera around with me the entire weekend and only took these two shots? I blame Brother, who was already too horribly embarrassed by the family to let me take any pictures of the sock in action. I didn't even get to stop at either of the two LYSs I scoped out before we left!)

Seraphim is coming along nicely, and as of this morning I had four rows of Chart 3 plus the edging chart (#4) left to do -- that's only 14 rows! Here's the latest progress shot:

I plan finishing it up this week, then starting on Sizzle. Many, many thanks to Wendy, who pointed out that my gauge issue might work to my advantage. (This was just another example of how my warped brain deals with math. Silly me, I was thinking that somehow having less stitches in my gauge swatch than I was supposed to meant that my sweater would come out smaller; in fact it's just the opposite.)

I'm awaiting my Knit Picks order this week (tomorrow I hope!), containing some of their new needles. I'll be sure to offer up my two cents on them, as I know the reviews have been mixed.